


Violent Red

by spazmoid



Category: South Park
Genre: Crenny, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, Existentialism, Gore, Horror, M/M, crenny big bang, crenny big bang 2017, makedamnsure, mctucker, taking back sunday - Freeform, violent red
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 04:35:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spazmoid/pseuds/spazmoid
Summary: "... McCormick." Craig finally found his voice. Kenny's surname came out low and steady unlike Craig's heartbeat which was loud and cacophonic in his chest."Yes dear?""You're fucking dead." Those words were enough to make Kenny freeze in his tracks, and for a flitting moment, Craig thought he was waking up. Then, Kenny annihalated all of his hope as he nodded slowly.Kenny let out a low, omnious whistle. "You remember."or alternatively:that one crenny fic inspired by an old ass emo song from forever ago





	Violent Red

**Author's Note:**

> hello there this is spaz/nat/whatever you want to call me but im telling you this is not complete like its 10k so far but will be 15k+ later hopefully by valentines day but i really want to post something for the big bang so here you go rest of my ramble will be at the end notes if you want to hear more of my lameass excuses

Kenny couldn't remember when it had started -- maybe it was always happening and Kenny was just now beginning to notice that something was missing inside of him. There was a void that was swallowing him whole. He could feel whatever was left of who he was being suffocated more and more upon each return from heaven to hell and back to whatever purgatory 'regular' life had became.

His fingers scrambled to his chest and rested there, scratching into it and leaving red marks over his heart formed by his nails. He dug them deeper and deeper with every scratch. The cold winter air touched and caressed him lovingly, numbing the pain with chills.

Kenny was used to being cold. The only heat came from a small portable heater in his room that sometimes blew out and had to be kicked back to life. It didn't even bother him. It had just became a part of him -- like pudgy flab spilling over the rim of his misfit jeans, like the acne that covered his face and back, like the jaggedness of his fucked up, jaundiced teeth, one of them scraping against his cheek and sometimes rubbing it raw. There was so much he had became accustomed to, but that strange, vacant feelng most definitely wasn't something he could adapt to. He no longer felt at home in his own skin. He was just a skinwalker trying to fit in amongst small-town folk and small-minded people.

He brought his hands to his face and took another breath. "Kenny?"

He split his fingers and saw between the gaps -- dirty blond hair and dirtier clothes, the grease of needing a proper shower making it cling to her forehead. A smile broke his face open, and he sat up. "Nightmare?"

Karen was so much older now, too old to be sleeping with her older brother when she was scared at night, but Kenny didn't mind it nor would he ever reject her. She needed companionship as much as he did. It didn't help that he always seemed to baby her, treat her as a treasure when he could, wanting to give her some sort of sanctuary in their shitty life.

The decades old mattress creaked under her light weight, and she curled up against him. While Kenny seemed to a little overweight from the amount of junk food, Karen seemed the opposite. She was malnourished in the opposite direction, and Kenny made the effort to use his saved change to buy her her favourite snacks and food.

"Yeah. You had died again." The words made Kenny's chest feel odd, the sicker side of him relishing in the knowledge that idea that someone, anyone remembered him (even if she thought it was nothing more than a nightmare).

"No. I'm right here. I always will be." Karen didn't know just how true that 'always' was. The thought of it made his face wash away into a blankness, and he closed his eyes. During quiet moments like this -- with Karen, with Kevin, with his drunkard parents who always meant well but weren't well -- he felt some sort of fucked up okay. This old room covered in posters that were given or bought with money saved from small errands and big mistakes, with its light bulbs that had went out weeks ago or flickered depending on the weather. The smell of cat piss and rat shit that covered everything. The tootoo dark that lay beyond his closed eyes.

In moments like this, he took the time to think about anything but his own existence. He remembered Karen's smile, her proudly worn Mysterion tattoo done 'professionally' with a twenty-five dollar tattoo kit from the glorious world of E-bay. He reminisced Kevin's short visits when he had time between all those part-time jobs and his on-again off-again girlfriend and future baby mama.

He forgot the things that didn't matter -- like broken teens collapsing from the inside out, collapsing inward and having their rib cages split open -- and just focused on his inhales and exhales. He tried to forget how he didn't feel anything. He tried oh so hard to forget that he was only filled with some kind of cold demon dwelling in a heavy, maybe-there heart.

Maybe Satan that fucking red faggot was messing with his head, or maybe it was God fucking with him over royally with that giant holy dick of his. He should talk about these kind of things with someone -- _anyone_ \-- but instead he chose to let that deadly silence to wrap its fingers around his throat and snip out his tongue. He could taste the carnage of his decaying thoughts and emotions on the sliced muscle. The gore slid down his parched throat.

The sound of a dripping faucet came from the bathroom and seemed to mismatch his and Karen's heartbeats in a cacophonic dance. He closed his eyes until he could feel the sun against his lids and heard Karen's cell phone ring announcing that it was time that he and her both got ready for school.

His little sister stood up first, no doubt excited to see her friends at school while Kenny sat up more slowly and went to get dressed. He had just slid on a bulky orange hoodie when Karen came in with a hairbrush. She sat on the bed and waited.

It was a ritual that Kenny was the one who always did Karen's hair. Hell, he took care of Karen more than he took care of himself. "Braids?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Can you try and put it in a bun? The braids?"

"Yeah, sure," he said counting as he overlapped one strand of hair over the other before twisting it and securing it with a paperclip fished from his pocket to keep the hair in place. He rubbed the grease of her hair onto his pants before plucking up his backpack.

Kenny had an idea that Karen knew something was wrong with him, and the notion was concreted when Karen spoke up over their boots crunching in the snow as they made it to the bus stop. "Kenny?" Her voice was small and soft as if she was scared to speak. "You really aren't going anywhere, right?"

Kenny tilted his head and glanced at her. This again? He thought they had already talked about it. He just sighed and parted his cracked lips to answer--

"Not... dying, but y'know..."

Confusion settled in, and Kenny began to stare at her. "No, I don't know," he responded muffled by a soft brown scarf. He could see fear on her thin face.

"You're... different."

Kenny felt something crawling up his throat, and there was that bitterness on his tongue again that he had come to loathe. "Different?" He didn't realise how jaundiced and accusatory his tone was until the word was out. Karen's eyes were blown wide, and her lips froze in place. She bit down on her tongue. Kenny wouldn't admit it, but that sicker part of him was alive and well and god did it enjoy every bit of fear on her face.

"... Nevermind," she murmured and stood next to him apart from him and his usual gang.

"Bringing your dyke of a sister along today?"

Kenny looked at Cartman and rolled his eyes. Karen was pressed next to him, but she refused to look at any of them. She seemed to still be reeling from Kenny's single-worded sentence earlier but not too far gone to not shoot Cartman back a retort: "At least I'm not a fat, dick-sucking fag." She finally looked up and stuck her tongue at the fat, dick-sucking fag in question. A whine bypassed Eric's lips, and the group all laughed at him as the bus rolled to a stop. Their new bus driver was a chill guy with matted black hair and headphones always on his ears. He drummed on the bus wheel as they boarded. Karen took a beeline to the back to join some girls from her school as Kenny picked an isolated seat to be by himself.

He rested his head against the cool, frosted bus window. He closed his eyes, and the world just disappeared for a little while.

School was a stifling place. He could laugh and joke with the guys, but by the time he was old enough to recognise who his real friends were and who the fake ones were, he felt too accustomed to them to even leave them behind -- albeit, he knew that they wouldn't hesitate to do the opposite. Kenny was expendable to them, but there was just some damn, cursed human need for intimacy despite them not really be close to one another at all.

By high school, most of the other students and kids had begun to avoid him too. Kenny wasn't sure if it was his attitude or the fights he tended to pick whenever he could. He just loved the way a fist, a slap, a foot made him feel. It _hurt_. It was an actual feeling. He could feel again, and that was just really fuck great. Some sort of feeling was better than nothing at all, and the best part was he always got off scott-free; if he died during the fight, he would just come back as if nothing had happened at all. It all meant nothing in the end just like he did.

He reminded himself to breathe in and out.

Exhale. Inhale. Repeat.

He hadn't even noticed he had been standing frozen in the school hallway until he looked ahead and saw that his friends had left him behind -- again. ("Oh my god you killed Kenny!" rung in his head like a cursed mantra that he couldn't quite get rid of.) They didn't care. They never did. He was just a dumb blond who had shitty luck and a somewhat shitty life.

That moment of being abandoned was such a perfect opportunity to slip into the bathroom. Kenny just had to take it. The door opened with a swing, and he went to slide down onto the bathroom floor and let his head fall back to hit the white brick wall. He heard the bell ring, muffled by the heavy bathroom door.

That was where he first reunited with Craig. The boring kid who was always in the office from some misunderstanding, who sometimes donned skirts and dresses unabashedly despite his obvious masculine features. He really didn't give two fucks about anything but his own happiness and being content. He had loyal friends who wouldn't replace him when he died. Kenny could imagine how hard that the fatass crybaby would bawl every time he heard the name 'Craig' after Tucker's death. He could see that twitchy spazz still and frozen for once in pained shock and denial over his expired ex-boyfriend (or current, it was a little tricky with those two). Token would pay for the funeral procession -- black people were always sluts for that Christian shit -- but Kenny had a feeling Craig wasn't that big on things like that. Maybe it was some sort of odd vibe, but he felt a connection with the guy who just strove for normalcy despite living in such a fucked up place where absolutely nothing at all was normal.

"Hey."

Craig was tall and pretty -- he could call a guy pretty right? -- with a lanky body that made him appear taller than he was and a face covered in teenage acne. The smell of coffee clung to him when he was close like this (Tweek really was a clingy fuck wasn't he?). Kenny's eyes trailed up Craig's legs, to his thighs, and then--

" _Hey_."

Oh, apparently Craig had been the first to break the stale silence in between them. Once on his phone, Craig's fingers were now hovering over the touch screen as he impassively looked down at the other teen. He tilted his head, and Kenny saw the glint of silver and blue from his braces flash when Craig opened his mouth to speak again.

"Do you have a dick in your ear or something? You've been staring at me for a while. It's creepy as hell."

"It's your fault for being so good looking."

Apparently, Craig wasn't used to being complimented so bluntly. He stared for a moment. Kenny could see Craig's tongue trace his braces hidden behind his closed mouth. "Gay."

Kenny snickered and nodded. "Wouldn't say that," he said and pulled down his scarf enough to show off his own fucked up teeth -- nice, wild, and untamed going in different directions, some chipped, some not. "I'm a little bit of everything." He put his scarf back over his mouth, but he didn't break eye contact. "That's why you should go out with me." That wasn't what Kenny meant to say, but it was what came out. He stared closely, watching Craig's fingers lose a bit of grip on his phone. God, this guy was too subtle. Kenny really had to give all his attention to try and gauge Craig's thoughts. Kenny fucking loved it. "You have a thing for blonds right?" Tweek was blond, Thomas was blond... There was a correllation -- at least in Kenny's mind there was, and he felt it was right.

The silence was back, but it was less stale and dull, filled with a buzzing confusion from the gears working in the seemingly stoic boy's brain. Craig was trying to piece together Kenny's intentions. Kenny fucking knew it. He still didn't trust him because of the Peru thing. That, or Craig didn't trust too much of anyone. It was probably a mixture of both.

"No."

Kenny was glad the scarf covered his mouth to hide his grimace.That was not exactly the answer he wanted. His nails dug into the palms of his hand, and he bit down on his tongue. Maybe Craig was just saying Kenny was wrong about his thing for blonds. There was no way in hell Craig was turning him down.

"I don't mind hanging out, but if we do, promise me nothing weird. I don't want to be pulled into some crazy shit. I'm not a huge fan of just hanging out with guys I don't really know."

Craig had spoken before Kenny had a chance to voice his protests -- or do something even dumber than that (fingers around an open throat, pressing down on a pronounced adam's apple, listening to gags before they faded). Now his grin was back, wider than before, and it could be seen by the way his eyes crinkled from his cheeks. "You chose me as your partner for every field trip you son of a shit. I won't pull you into anything." Craig snorted and let out a breath Kenny guessed was a laugh (He liked it.).

It was true; even if someone else's name was called, Craig would always be beside him, staring over at seemingly nothing and holding Kenny's hand despite them being fucking middle schoolers. Kenny couldn't help but hold his hand back. He used to feel a little guilt for Butters having to usually deal with Cartman, but feeling guilt kind of became practically impossible by the time high school started. When high school hit, he and Craig had broken nearly all contact; without partnered field trips, they had no reason to be around each other. Kenny had his gang, and Craig had Those GuysTM after all. It was like a shitty gang war between their cliques.

Craig shrugged. "You're right, but I don't remember them really." The words caused a pang to vibrate through Kenny's chest. That was right, since he died every trip, there would be gaps in Craig's memories.

Kenny would have to fix that.

A few more minutes of quiet. Kenny stood and took a few steps to stand alongside Craig. He could now feel Craig's heat mingling with his from the proximity. Craig had gone back to his phone, and this close, Kenny could see him shuffling in between Tumblr and his messages. "What do you want to do?"

"Space center." The response wasn't too surprising. Craig had always been a slut for space. He had been one of the only kids to listen intently to every word the guide spewed, lingering to read every plaque and panel. In middle school, Craig and Tweek's solar system project was put on full display, extremely accurate and detailed with crazily splattered, glow-in-the-dark stars courtesy of Tweek's spazzing fingers. It had been absolutely flawless with details and facts even the teacher didn't know about the universe. _What a fucking nerd_. It was pathetic yet cute.

The rest of their quiet was only interrupted when the second period bell rung and Kenny decided to hop away from Craig. He spun around on his heel. "Seeya Saturday," he muffled out from behind his scarf. His next class was art, and he didn't want to risk missing it. He was always the first to arrive in the class and sit down at his table. The art teacher smiled at him, and Kenny flashed her a peace sign before grabbing a paintbrush.

Paint was always his favourite to use in class. He had plenty of pens and pencils at his own house, but the art teacher had the good, quality shit. He brought the brush to his tongue to wetten it before dippng it into the paint. Left, right, repeat. His dull eyes focused on the paper as other students filed in, glancing over at him as he worked on a portrait of a boy in a chullo hat and downcast eyes. The teacher would walk and nod in approval, smiling and telling him how good he was doing. She was a bit of a critic, but Kenny was her favourite student out of the other kids who fucked around and tossed paper balls at each other or grumbled about how much more work that art class was than they expected.

It was only when Kenny got home did he realise he had forgotten about that empty feeling the etire time he was talking to Craig -- well, stood with. He sat down on his bed and listened for the sound of Karen to come in and head to bed. He knew she had probably been out with Ruby since neither of them had curfews. At least, if Ruby did, she sure as hell didn't give a damn about it. Kenny's parents had never bothered to schedule one since they were too drunk to even tell time anyway.

With a soft sigh, Kenny fell against his bed and closed his eyes.

_There was something cold and hard pressed into his sternum. It traced up each bone of his thoracic vertebrae -- one, two, three -- and then pressing into the base of his neck. Kenny knew what it was. How could he forget the end of a gun to his skin after holding it towards himself so many times. But this time it wasn't him with his finger on the trigger, he was able to see a wide grin, toothless and black and empty before_

When it fired, his eyes were staring at the ceiling. He licked around in his mouth and thought he could still taste copper and iron, but he didn't feel a gap. He traced the shadows on the ceiling and swore he could make out faces there. They were twisted and distorted and screaming. God, Kenny could hear them in his head. He could hear the voices swarming, and when he covered his ears they were still there.

They buzzed in his mind like flies, crawling and squirming within his brain. They only stopped when he opened his mouth to scream. He sat up and scrambled to grab his hoodie.

Because of the dream, Kenny spent the next days drawing in lieu of sleep. He only pretended to close his eyes and rest when Karen or his parents went to check on him, so he was awake when he heard thuds from something stepping on the dumpster outside his bedroom window.

At first, he thought it was a cat. His ears perked, and he put down the black mess of some humanoid looming figure with too many eyes and too many wings down on his sheets and went over to look. He practically flinched back on reflex when a blue gloved hand rapped on the thin glass that was a barrier between his face and the fist. _Jesus Christ, why couldn't Craig come in a more normal way._

Then he remembered that despite Craig's best efforts to be ordinary, he was weird and nerdy and kind of gross Kenny remembered Craig asking him to help load a water gun with piss and dumpster juice. He was pretty sure he had been using the game they were playing as an excuse to fuck with Stan. Out of everyone in the gang, Craig seemed to have the strongest grudge against their 'leader' Stanley Marsh.

"I'm coming in," Craig stated and hoisted up the window with only a bit of difficulty.

The boy who had been fucking Kenny's mind royally the last few days just came in so impassively and coolly. Craig's feet landed with a thud on the floor, and he shoved his hands unceremoniously into his jacket pockets as he looked around with a bored expression. Kenny's room had not changed much over the last few years -- just some new posters, new games, and a few discarded phone minute cards.

Craig's eyes rested on the notepad on Kenny's bed. "Nice drawing," he commented and looked up at Kenny who was not so subtly staring at the way his denim jeans fit into tall boots ( _Bless Clyde and his family and friends discount._ ) and the way the dark colours seemed to ennunciate how long his legs were. It gave Craig the illusion of height despite being a little shorter than Kenny. Maybe that was why he always wore bulky shoes. Dude probably had some sort of Napoleon complex.

Kenny walked over to pick up a box of off-brand poptarts and held one out to Craig. He was already biting into one of his own. He could see the small scrunch from Craig's nose when he saw Kenny eating with his mouth full.

"I only like the ones without icing," he said and looked away.

"Dude." Craig looked back at him, staring the honey-blond down with only the slightest quirk of his brow. "Who the fuck eats poptarts _without_ icing?"

Craig let out that breathy, nasally laugh again that made a smile play at the corners of Kenny's lips. "I do," he said with a shrug. "Ready to go?"

Kenny grinned, teeth coated in crumbs and poptart jizz. _Fucking_ **_gross_**. He crammed the rest of the flat, saturated fat-filled pastry into his mouth as he put the box of poptarts back into his backpack. Emergency snacks if they got hungry at some point during the day. He wasn't certain how long they would be spending in the center, but he felt like it would be a while considering there were new exhibits in the space center.

He swung the backpack over his shoulder. "Ready darling. Just let me say bye to my sister first." His voice became increasingly muffled as he tightened his hood to cover his chapped lips.

Craig waited in Kenny's room as the blond went out to hug his still half-asleep sister and tell her he was leaving before heading out with Craig. That strange excitement he had been feeling for nearly a week now showed in his step. When was the last time he felt nerves like this? A few years? A whole decade or more? His skin felt like it was being singed -- similar to the hellfire and brimstone he had experienced over and over again, but it was also so different. It felt amazing and exhilerating.

God, his head was fucked. The void in him had began filling up way too fast, and now, instead of feeling empty, he felt too much. His emotions were all or nothing. All Craig and infatuation or just an empty, torturous nothing.

Craig's boots landed in the snow heavier than Kenny's ratty old trainers that were a size too small for him. "Hey." Craig immediately had Kenny's attention with one word alone. "So the the space center isn't open yet."

"Does that matter?" Kenny grinned. One of his chipped teeth overlapped one of the bottom ones, but Craig still found it somewhat endearing. He shook away the thought and shoved his hands into his pockets unceremoniously.

"Fuck that. I'm not getting banned from the center and arrested."

"You can't get banned or arrested if we don't get caught, right?" Kenny grinned. "Besides, I heard they have a new attraction opening up; we _gotta_ break in to see that shit. Think about being the first one to see something like that." Craig looked over at him and stared. _Hook, line, and sinker_. Kenny knew wasting all of his data on browsing Craig's Tumblr page would come in handy. It didn't matter that he was bluffing as long as Craig didn't see through it. He hummed and looked ahead. "Or we can just hit up McDonald's or whatever and head there later..." Kenny saw that Craig seemed to not really be listening. He was just kind of staring at him now. ( _Who was the creepy one now, Mr Craig Tucker?)_

"I change my mind. I know how we can get in." Craig's pace seemed to pick up so gradually that Kenny didn't even realise it until Craig was about a yard from him. _Wow, eager much?_ He had to jog just to catch up, a little out of breath. He really needed to really cut down on cheap junk food. He swore he was developing type two diabetes. Or _die_ -abetes if he wanted to try and be funny. God, he had to save that joke for later.

He found another grin on his face. He almost felt like laughing. He felt great. Something about being with Craig just made him feel so alive.

They ended up outside the facility in no time, and Craig led Kenny to the back. Kenny whistled. "And everyone calls you a stoic, boring as fuck know-it-all." Craig shot Kenny a dirty look before hiking up a small snow mound and stomping it down until he found a rusted key. When Kenny gave him a questioning look, Craig didn't bother to give him any sort of explanation. Craig was just so full of mysteries and puzzles Kenny wanted to solve.

He followed him into the space center and looked around. They had been plunged into pitch darkness. It made Kenny slightly uneasy. It wasn't like he was afraid of the dark; he just had no idea who or what was in it. His darted around, and he was regretting his idea to break in. They should've went to McDick's instead of going into some dark, probably haunted planetarium in a weird ass space center.

Kenny rethought that last thought. If anything did haunt the place, it would've been him. He was the only person to really die in this place.

Still, the dark permeating throughout the building made him more and more uneasy as they continued to walk. He thought he felt something living in the shadows, something creeping closer and closer. The fleeting thought of a ghost being somewhere was becoming more and more plausible with each quiet step.

Craig seemed entirely unfazed by this. Kenny had a feeling that this wasn't Craig's first time breaking into the center despite protesting earlier. Kenny lagged a little behind him, baby blues still searching for whatever was looming around, behind, and above him. _Did something move in the corner?_ Kenny rushed to stand by Craig's side again. He tapped his shoulder. "Having all the fun without me?"

Craig glanced back, not failing to notice that Kenny was so close he could hear Kenny's breathing before even hearing him speak. "You're too slow," he said and looked at the plaque in front of him.

"Not everyone has legs that go on for days."

"Dude, that's gay."

Craig had said it so impassively Kenny almost didn't notice the joke. He grinned and bumped his elbow with Craig's. "I know. Hella gay."

Craig rolled his eyes so far back Kenny wondered if they would get stuck like that. He poked Craig's cheek just to check. Craig glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. He still seemed all right. Just those same half-lidded eyes that made it seem like Craig was bored and constantly fatigued, always waiting for an opportunity to take a quick nap.

He began to walk without telling Kenny what he was doing, but Kenny followed him anyway. Kenny trusted Craig to know where he was going. He was pretty certain Craig had enough knowledge on the area to qualify as a guide. Kenny would've gotten lost by now on his own, but Craig made it to the actual planetarium. The noirette tried the knob to enter the dome, and a small '"fuck" resonated in the empty room despite being nothing than a murmur.

"I got this," Kenny said and knelt down to have the knob at eye level. "Shine a light, will you?" Kenny heard a some rustling before a light was shined on the knob. "Thanks," Kenny murmured under his breath as he pulled out a blade from his hoodie's pocket. He squinted and began working at the screws, managing to pull them all out before wiggling the knob off to clatter on the floor. He really hoped that there was no alarm to go off. Probably not consider how much South Park sucked.

He pressed down on the lock mechanism as he shoved the heavy door open. Craig waited, stepping over Kenny to be the first inside. Kenny straightened up and followed after Craig, watching as the noirette seemed to know exactly what he was doing as he started to turn on the projector and let stars begin to light up the sky.

"Hey," Craig said and beckoned Kenny to stand next to him. It was then that Craig began to talk. He might have hardly said a word, but when he really started on a subject he liked -- in this case, grand ole mama space -- he couldn't seem to stop.

Kenny's mind had turned off the longer Craig spoke. He was pretty sure this was the most he had ever heard him speak -- all in that steady, nasal voice of his. He showed Kenny ever constellation, every star that had a name above them. "Let's sit. I'm tired of standing," Kenny said and swung his legs right out of the window of the projector room and allowed himself to fall the several feet drop. He landed awkwardly on his feet and tripped right down the steps. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

_He heard the sound of a door creaking behind him once he had landed on his feet. He stumbled again, this time falling backwards down what felt like nothing but an empty void. He hadn't fallen this way before. All the other times he had found himself in Heaven or Hell, but this... this was just nothing at all. He was surrounded by nothing but the shadows he feared and with his own thoughts he feared even more._

_When he opened his mouth to speak, that bitter, copper feeling slipped down his throat. The taste of blood and gore on his tongue. He reached to claw at it, desperately trying to pull out the cause of his own suffering. His nails began to break through the skin, and there was a warm stickiness coating, and he couldn't breathe. Oh God. He couldn't breathe._

**_Please help me. Please, please, pleasepleaseplease._ **

_Who was he begging to help him? All the religious figures he had begged to free him from this neverending cycle of reincarnation never had. If that was the case, was anything real? What if this was the real Hell. He felt his oesophagus and wrapped his fingers around the food pipe and pulled. The tentacle like organ tore out easily, but the metallic taste only worsened. He dug his fingers in deeper and began tearing and shredding the tissue and muscle all the while struggling to make air seep into his lungs._

Kenny opened his eyes and found himself on a stranger's bed. He reached to touch his throat and let out a shaky breath. Any good feelings he had had during his and Craig's platonic date were severed and replaced with nothing again. He was numb, lost, and afraid to speak. He sat paralysed and upright on the bed as he searched for the feelings he knew he should feel. He reached his head and felt a bandage there. He poked it, not even wincing when it made a pang of pain scuttle down his nerves and made them tingle. That was something, and something was better than nothing.

He brought his hand to examine it, staring blankly at the thin patch of blood now on his palm from touching his head injury. It felt like a century had passed as he put his hand back down and let it land in his lap.

"You finally woke up." Kenny's head turned to look over at Craig who had a composition book with a well-worn spine and bent crumpled pages. Even from this distance, Kenny could see the tiny yet clunky letters done in black ink that covered one side and flowed into the other. So that had been a dream. That was just what it was like inside his own head.

He wished he had just fallen to hell.

He swung his legs off the Red Racer sheets Craig had not grown out of and went to stand next to him.

His head was swimming as he leant over and peeked into the notebook. He didn't fail to notice that Craig had on pyjama pants that were a little too short, grazing his ankles and showing a hint of the thick black hair that not only made up the hair on his head but the hair on his body as well. There was no longer a hat on his head, his Peruvian roots made his hair wild and made of waves head given up on flat-ironing after eighth grade.

The notebook had times and everything. Craig was scribing what had happened during the day:

> "5:00 couldn't sleep so i didnt bother and just decided to get breakfast captain crunch and coffee tweek made this weird new brew he begged me to try for him   
> it tastes like shit ill tell him later before our date on friday

Kenny's heart sunk when he read those words. Craig didn't seem to be giving two shits that he was even reading it. Kenny guessed that was because Craig was so honest anyway, so his journal would just be filled with something he wouldn't hesistate to say out loud. Kenny read a little more before seeing more about Tweek and then the details of his most recent almost death experience. That was not sometthing he needed to know any details of. That fucking dream (nightmare?) was enough for him.

"Can I borrow your bathroom?" he asked already heading there. He had a good idea of where it was from visiting once or twice as a kid.

"Yeah sure."

"Thanks!"

The door shut with a click behind him, and there was a second one as he turned the lock. He figured Craig would be writing in his journal for a while, so he could look around. He started with the drawers. Everything was so neat and well put together. Did this guy have OCD or what? Hair supplies in one drawer, makeup in another that looked hardly used, lotions and soap, and -- holy shit, he didn't think Craig would have one of those.

_Images of Craig pressing it into Tweek, stretching him wide. Tweek panting beneath Craig, being able to feel those hands on his skin, those lips on his, feel his body heat before Craig lowered himself down on Tweek's twitching cock -- twitching and jerking like the rest of him and making Craig's usually impassive face go slack-jawed and open, eyes fluttering closed and those long lashes casting a curtain of shadows on his cheeks._

Kenny gripped it a little too tightly before tossing it back into the drawer and looking around at the other things. He found Craig's toothbrush (Red Racer themed, what a fucking dork.). He barely thought before slipping the cap off and putting it into his own mouth. He let it sit there for a while before slipping it out and rinsing it off. It had tasted like mint and coffee. He spotted a more pristine toothbrush, green and plain and bristles turned yellow -- no doubt Tweek's. He slipped down his pants before holding it out, pure yellow piss coating the bristles before he placed flushing the toilet and using the porcelain throne's water to rinse it off.

With a smile crossing his lips, he put it back in its proper and original place without a care in the world. He felt his previous animosity melt away and took a deep, shuddering breath. His head lolled back and he stared at the ceilings. He was seeing faces there too, in the shadows caused by the ceiling light. He closed his eyes to block them out and just focused on his breathing, but it was hard as he remembered his previous image of Craig and Tweek fucking themselves into the mattress -- not him, when it should be. He had known when he saw him in the bathroom that he was the one who would fix him.

The drawings in his sketchbook, the etchings of humanoid figures had turned into a thick black, quirked brow and a teen opening his mouth to let out a breathy laugh. He wanted that. Craig was his. He just knew it. He was as sure of it as he was the voices he heard at night screaming and scratching inside his skull.

"Kenny? Are you taking a shit or something?"

A crack resounded with the force Kenny snapped his head and eyes open to stare blankly at the door. He quickly buttoned up his pants (He had learnt from experience how much it fucking hurt to get the skin of his dick caught in there.) and flushed the toilet.

"Can't a guy shit in peace? Hold on, Jesus."

He turned the faucet to reassure Craig that he was done. He let the scalding heat run over his hands and burn them a violent red. He counted as he scrubbed them with the soap. The counting soothed him; it gave him something else to focus on.

After sixty-nine counts, he opened the bathroom door. He trotted to Craig's room in dirty old socks he had owned for way too long only to discover the part-Peruvian teen gone and no longer there. What the actual fuck? Who left their guests like that? He should've expected Craig not to give too shits about proper human ettiquette, but, seriously, they were in the south. They should have some sense of manner.

He grabbed onto the railing wondering if Craig had carried him upstairs. Guy looked kind of like a twig in his clothes, but it seemed like their were some serious muscles beneath those slimming shirts to have lifted Kenny and carry him all the way upstairs.

"Hey Craig wh--"

He froze, body tensing when he saw the other guys on the couch. "What?"

Craig came into the room as if there was nothing wrong with Clyde in his red, white, and black South Park Cows varsity jacket and playing some stupid first-person shooter with zombies and unrealistic gore (and Kenny _definitely_ knew a shit ton about gore).

Kenny's now glazed eyes with small, pinpoints of pupils now stared at Craig. The expression didn't seem human. Craig seemed taken aback by it, but other then a slight tensing of his shoulders, there were no other signs of his sudden unease. There was suddenly something off and dark entering the room, and it was coming from Kenny.

Then there was a bright grin, but those eyes looked the same: the dead, glazed eyes of a waking corpse. "Didn't know you had other company coming over. Would've dressed better if I knew," Kenny lied and trotted to flop over next to Clyde. Clyde seemed either too stupid or too into the game to catch on to the same thing Craig had caught onto -- maybe it was just all in his head. Kenny just probably had some sort of brain damage from his fall. It was a miracle the guy wasn't dead.

"Need some aspirin?" he said and tossed Kenny an orange bottle of sweet ibuprofen -- close enough.

"Hell yeah." Kenny swallowed it dry much to Craig's distaste. He was just about to toss him a can of Dr Thunder. Still, Kennny, took the drink and opened it with the fizzy sigh of the can opening. Made Kenny think of all those cheesy pop commercials where the actors would let out a practically erotic sigh of content at drinking the beverage.

* * *

 

  
Kenny was afraid to look in the mirror. He didn't recognise what was there. There were dark circles under his eyes. His dreams were dark, were made of his teeth biting into skin. That single syllable name echoing in his head like a mantra or a sacrireligious prayer.

He dreamt of covering pale skin in red marks that would blossom into the darkest of contusions before kissing it as some sort of apology.

When Craig was actually there, they never managed to get that far. There lips would meet, and Kenny was drowning in too many emotions that he swore he would rather asphyxiate before breaking for air. He craved the closeness that made him feel something. The way he couldn't quite breathe and grew lightheaded, the pain of his lungs constricting like his fingers tangling in Craig's shirt. He loved this. He loved Craig. He loved the way he could feel when with Craig. The unrelenting beat of his heart as it struggled against its ribbed prison and the numbing of that migraine once there in his head.

Maybe that intensity was what made Craig pull back. He always grinned when he saw his private ambrosia panting and with kiss swollen lips.

It made him want to kiss him again.

Kenny kept falling. When he died, he no longer dreaded coming back. Even if there was something brooding inside of him that he tried so hard to shove down, he loved being with him. It became a habit to skip class to goof off or sneak into the space center without paying or watching some terrible movie at Craig's house in between video games (Kenny found out that Red Racer actually had a damn game.).

"I think I love you."

Kenny was watched for Craig's reaction, tracing Tucker's lips as he tried to make out just what he was thinking. He couldn't quite read it, but he got the idea it wsn't necessarily a bad reaction. In fact, Kenny swore Craig's pupils dilated a bit and there was a hint of a smile in his tone when he spoke next. "Idiot. It hasn't even been a month."

It was true, but Kenny also knew he seriously was in love with him.

* * *

 

 

Kenny was scared. He didn't know where the thoughts were coming from or what to do with them. There were demons in his head (angels? Apparitions? Spirits?). He wondered if the others saw what he saw. The shadows creeping in the corners of his eye. The advancing panic that had began to settle between moments of maddening apathy.

There was the constant taste of dried blood in his mouth and a persistent bitterness there. He was tired. So fucking tired of the constant waking and falling to hell, rising to heaven with the mortal plane always being some sort of porgatory where he resided for only brief periods before disappearing again at the expense of what he believed now was his sanity.

Sometimes he missed his old depression, the craving to put a gun to his head and put down enough force to pull the trigger. It had been comforting in a way, familiar. It wasn't the way it hurt but the way drowning in it had been cool and familiar. The sameness made him feel some kind of normal even if it wasn't exactly a comfortable fit (like the hoodie he wore that was a little too big and the shirt a little too tight).

Now all he felt was the fear that came with feeling nothing at all. It crept upon him like a lion does a gazelle. If he was still he would be forced to think too little or too much. He never remembered his thoughts or dreams anymore. All he remembered was the fear.

He honestly wondered if he was meant to be alive. He must've been since he always came the fuck back, but what was the hell was the purpose? He had asked God once, Jesus, Satan, fucking _Hitler_ , but no one had a damn answer for him. They just kept bringing him back like it was some sort of sick joke that Kenny wasn't laughing at anymore.

"Hey Kenneh," Cartman said in that annoying accent of his. "So what do you think?"

"What?"

* * *

 

 

When he and Craig started dating, Kenny was always over his place. He woke up feeling the best tangled in gangly limbs (that guy was all goddamn legs) and hot and sweaty from being too close and buried under too many old ass quilts no doubt sewn by Craig's grandmother. He always woke up first just to stare at him sleeping. A parasite needed a host, and that was what Craig was for him. Kenny knew if he could he'd keep Craig there, keep the reason he was pushing on (love and happiness and all that shit that rested in between), he would. Was it really so bad to want to take someone and lock them away? To remain forever together, to no longer be infinitesimal and abysmal but Everything for one single person.

That was when the first seed was planted. The first time the idea came to him. He could have that. He could have Craig. He could lock up the boy with dull, boring brown eyes that changed colour depending on the time of day and the placement of the sun. He would have Craig and have him bear everything just For Him.

The struggle of knowing whether everything was truly real, of understanding his placement upon this godforsaken planet and damned small mountain town would be infinitesimal and abysmal then. Everything would be small in comparison to just the two of them together.

Craig didn't know it yet, but he loved Kenny in the same way as he loved him.

Craig was scared. He remembered when he wrote that some things just weren't in his control. Kenny was one of those things. He wondered what happened to his dream. There were hands around his throat and a finger to his lips.

He had been tricked. The flower crown of Kenny's affections had actually just been a noose,a ruse to keep him chained to him now literally. The pressure of the fingers on his neck burst blood vessels beneath his skin and it leaked into his tissues to form pretty, purple bruises. It was too difficult to dislodge Kenny from his head, and he was scared.

Craig always asked Kenny for pictures, for selfies of them together and making terrible faces or laughing when Kenny tried so hard to make him do so. Sometimes he let Kenny draw over them or keep a copy.

The first time Craig saw Kenny's sketchbook he should've known something was off. The drawings inside of them seemed to evolve into something just not right the more he explored them. In the beginning they were simple portraits

He had never thought Kenny possible of being like this. He knew at times Kenny's kisses were a little aggressive, the marks he made a little possessive -- but so were Craig's. They had both loved the marks they would leave on eah other as some sort of sign Kenny belonged to Craig and Craig to Kenny.

Craig ad always been so sensible. He had always thought things through calm and collectively, but Kenny had thrown him into a disarray when his curiosity turned into a crush. When he actually fell for him, it became ablur of noticing the way bandaids always covered Kenny's fingers like some sort of fashion statement. Yet it wasn't love Craig felt. A small part of Craig didn't even believe in that kind of shit. For some reason the idea of loving, of being in love, was fucking terrifying.

How the fuck was Craig supposed to know Kenny meant it literally.

* * *

 

 

Kenny no longer believed in religion -- he knew God existed, Buddha, Muhammed, and the like -- but he just no longer believed. There was a difference between knowing something existed and believing it, and Kenny didn't believe in them anymore, but all of his faith rested in Craig. He had seen some sort of godliness in his eyes the other night, and the sound of his voice had became the whisper of the holy ghost.

He was in love, infatuated, and (just maybe) a little insane. The thoughts of Craig had wrapped around his scattered brain and tied it together with a cute little bow. He loved him so much it was maddening. The love no longer felt good. It hurt. It was painful to see him with other people. He wanted to undo the curse, but it couldn't stop. Just seeing Craig every now and then wasn't enough.

He saw him with Clyde. Saw him with Token. He didn't want to lost to any of them. He wanted Craig to only look at him. It wasn't enough. Nothing was enough. He couldn't let go. He was sorry.

Craig heard the apologies, but Craig knew Kenny didn't mean them.

"Just get away from me." Craig wrenched Kenny's fingers off of him and took a step back. All he wanted was time to himself. Was that too much to fucking ask for? Kenny's hands gripped his wrist as if trying to clutch him back towards him.

"Craig..."

"Please just fucking fuck off."

"Craig! It's a misunderstanding. Please."

"What the hell is there to misunderstand Kenny? You fucking punched the shit out of Clyde! I just want to be alone. Do you not get that? You never listen, and you just keep insisting that we keep--"

"I just want you here with me." The calm way Kenny said it was unnerving. Kenny wasn't reaching for him anymore, but his gaze was all consuming. Craig couldn't even see his irises anymore, those baby blues were eclipsed by his black pupils. "He was interfereing. He was lying--"

"Leave me alone!"

For a few days after their fight, Kenny just lay in bed, staring at the water stains on his ceilings. His dreams were violent, but it wasn't him dying. He was plunging a knife in and out, in and out of a shaking boy's chest.

* * *

 

 

Craig went to Kenny with the firm idea of apologising to him after leaving him so abruptly. He froze when he went into the McCormick house and saw what remained of the family. He took a step back only to have a hand placed on his back and shoved forward.

He winced as he fell on his wrists and scraped the palms and the side of his hands on the unpolished wood. His hand touched something sticky, and he pulled it back and stared at the foreign substance before grimacing and then recognising the corpse as Karen. Fucking Karen. Her dirty blonde hair was in her face, and she seemed broken. Her chest was torn apart and all he saw was a mess of tissue. He remembered the cat he had cut open in anatomy class and named Ophelia, and only Token had gotten the reference to the Shakespearean play; although, Karen wasn't swimming in formelyde but sticky vintage sanguinolent that dyed the tips of her hair.

"I can't find it." Kenny's voice came out low, slow, steady -- and most frightenly -- calm. He seemed at peace. There was no more desperate panic as he had seen in Kenny's dilated eyes the day he yanked him off of a sobbing Clyde. "I keep looking, but I can't fucking find it."

Craig took a step back when Kenny stepped towards him. He swung then, fist colliding with Kenny's cheek hard enough he heard the crunching of bone as he broke Kenny's jaw. He didn't wait for Kenny to recover, didn't try to fight as he ran off through the snow.

It was probably a bad idea to go home, but home was comfortable; home was where his feet carried him naturally. His hands fumbled to lock the door, and he went to find the phone. His fingers trembled as he tried to dial 911, fucking up each time. "Shit...," he hissed. It took too long, but he somehow managed to get it and was relieved to hear the dial tone.

He was not as relieved when he heard glass shatter. His head turned, and he saw a fist covered in glass shards reaching to unlock the window. For a moment, he illogically thought that the brown gloves belonged to someone else, but then he heard his name in a voice that once soothed him but now sent terror down his spine.

"Craig?" His name was said low, calm. Kenny was too fucking calm.

Craig didn't wait to see Kenny climb through the shattered window. He heard the crunching of glass as he made his way up the stairs.

It was amazing how similar crunching glass and crunching snow sounded.

Craig did his best to shut his parents' bedroom door as quietly as possible. He grunted as he started pushinng the dresser as a makeshift barricade. He could hear whistling. It grew louder and louder. Kenny's gloves embedded in a myriad of splintered glass remnants slid up the banister. The whistling stopped, and Craig heard his name shouted louder. Kenny's voice was cracking, splitting just like his head from his quickly worsening migraine. The throbbing of his head sounded like whispers. There were too many of them, and they were all saying CraigCraigCraig over and over again like a broken record.

"That hurt you know? You pack one hell of a right hook." His voice was flirting as he tried the knob to the room Craig was hiding in. His tone was cold, colder than snow and colder than long-dead bones. He was dead. Kenny really believed it now. He hahd been dead the entire time, and everyone else was not in the loop yet.

His shoulder slammed into the door. "Craig! Open the door!" Kenny heard the bones of his shoulder crack and break, but he couldn't feel it. He couldn't feel anything. The door opened just enough for him to peek in.

Those blue eyes reflected nothing. They were empty and soulless. Craig made eye contact with them just as he jumped out of the window. He didn't have time to reflect on the pain as he hit the snow with a loud yet muffled thud. He quickly scrambled to his feet and went to the backyard.

Kenny was quick to follow, but he landed gracefully. All of his vigilante work really came in handy. He could parkour like nobody's business.

He gave Craig's name one last shot as he followed the footprints left in the snow; although, this time, he actually got a response.

"Fuck. You."

It was the voice he knew and loved. Kenny was beaming as he spun on his heel just in time to see the glint of the axe just before it sliced into his neck. His eyes were wide, and when he tried to speak, only gurgling sounds bypassed. His vision was going in and out, Craig's face flickering in between the black outs as the noiret brought the axe down again, He kept doing it until the blood blossomed like spider lilies on the clean, white snow.

The breakdown came only after Kenny's head finally severed from the rest of his body. He fell on the ground and buried his face in his hands. The smell of gore on his hands made bile raise to his throat. He turned his back to the body to heave into the snow.

He was reliving the same nightmare. No matter how many times Craig killed Kenny or how brutally, Kenny was back but worse than before, and just when he thought things were finally over and done with, that smile was there again, next to his ear and whispering, "Hey braceface."

Craig jolted up from his desk and got a loud reprimand from the teacher. "Tucker, stop falling asleep in my class. To the office."

"Fucking damnit," he muttered and stood. He glanced and saw Kenny grinning at him from his own seat across the room. When Kenny blew him a kiss, he nearly screamed. He felt sick. Was he awake yet?

He stood frozen, staring at the orange stain that had soiled his existance without even realising it. His blank stare and pale face disturbed the teacher, and she cleared her throat.

"Tucker?"

Craig felt like everyone's eyes were on him. He finally understood what Tweek had felt like. Had felt like.

"I'll help him there," came a chipper voice albeit muffled from a brown scarf. Before Craig could even object, there was a hand on his arm leading him out of the door. Kenny's grip on him hurt. It was hard enough to bruise. Craig stared at the brown gloved hand in numb astonishment. He didn't see any holes from the glass he had sworn had decorated them in his dream.

"... McCormick." Craig finally found his voice. Kenny's surname came out low and steady unlike Craig's heartbeat which was loud and cacophonic in his chest.

"Yes dear?"

"You're fucking dead." Those words were enough to make Kenny freeze in his tracks, and for a flitting moment, Craig thought he was waking up. Then, Kenny annihalated all of his hope as he nodded slowly.

Kenny let out a low, omnious whistle. "You remember."

Craig ripped his arm out of Kenny's grip only for Kenny to snatch his fingers instead. Kenny somehow morphed their hands together, ensnarling their fingers with one another's.

"Of course I remember. I killed you." It almost scared Craig how calm he sounded. Tweek hadn't come back, Clyde hadn't come back, but Kenny... Kenny had been the one to kill all of them, and Kenny was the one who always, _always_ came back.

Kenny had dragged him to a closet and shoved Craig in there roughly before slamming the door behind him. He held up a hand, five fingers. "Five times."

"What?"

"Five." Kenny wiggled his fingers to emphasise whatever point he was trying to make. "You've killed me five times, and you still haven't realised this," he reached to touch Craig's face, making the noiret internally cringe, "is forever. You're not leaving me, and I'm not leaving you." There was a ghost in Kenny that wanted to say he was sorry for all of it -- for killing all of Craig's friends, for the future plans he had to kill his family -- but he knew if he said it, he'd be lying. It would just be the right thing to say.

Kenny was killing him, and Craig was sure it was on purpose. He was murdering Craig's hope for normalcy, his ties to the world, even corrupting his own sanity. Craig no longer was certain what was reality and what was fantasy anymore.

Kenny's lips felt cold on his when they connected. Craig was numb. "Accept it. Accept me. Accept us."

* * *

 

 

He bent down next to Craig and picked up the knife close to him. He walked farther into the house and seemed to be looking for something. He brought back a sketchbook and sat it down in front of Craig. Craig seemed to take the hint and lifted it to look at the pages with the edges and bindings seemed stained with the same blood.

They were beautiful and surreal. They seemed to depict something Craig couldn't quite explain, and within the black inkings of things with eyes, mouths, and scratching hands, there was a small foetus-like thing that seemed painted in there. Kenny was staring at him transfixed. Craig broke his gaze from the drawing that was beginning to make him feel sick only to be greeted by eyes with pupils blown so wide they drowned the baby blues he had known before and the haemotoma that had formed from Kenny's fight with Clyde weeks ago made the white tint red. Fuck. Craig hardly recognised this as the high school boyfriend he knew.

"I love you."

Three words that Kenny had said before, but now they brought a kind of nausea to Craig's throat. He scooted away and tried to hold it in.

Craig was slowly beginning to realise that Kenny was sabotaging his life. He was isolating him. He only now realised he, Clyde, Tweek, and Token rarely hung out anymore. It was just KennyKennyKenny all the fucking time. They were closer than most, closer than anything, and Craig felt chained to the spot, chained to Kenny's parasitic need for his love.

"What should we do today?" It was a rheotorical question, but Craig liked to dream he could leave this place one day. His leg throbbed from where Kenny had pulled it out of its socket.

"Hmn." Kenny just hummed and rolled to look at Craig with a smile. Kenny was too broken to be fixed. His mind was filled with rambling ghosts. This was their home now, so why was Craig weeping? He did love him, right?

Craig felt like a prisoner. He had felt like a prisoner even before he had actually became one. "Can we leave tonight?" Craig couldn't trust his own mind anymore. He never knew what to do. He wasn't even sure if he wanted to go home anymore -- no, this was home. Kenny was trying to do what was best for them even if it was some sort of twisted, unhealthy obsession.

There was something missing. Kenny had stolen something from him (was it his heart?). Kenny had always been trying to be the hero he wasn't, and now he had turned into the wicked villian that had locked someone away somewhere. Craig thought it might be a storage unit.

**Author's Note:**

> so heres the rest of the shitty ass excuses and how this came to be and all that jazz
> 
> so this was a project i started at like fourteen or younger i dont know i was pretty damn young and fascinated with the idea you cant die that many times and not be kindve fucked because ive died repeatedly in my dreams been in a coma and attempted suicide and let me tell you it can really fuck you over royally and you begin to question everything in your life so thats where that stemmed from
> 
> and that mysterion ep where kenny tried to kill himself really sealed the deal for me and i was like ha my headcanon was right fuckers but not in a happy way more a self righteous way because i was motherfucking right ayyyyeeee
> 
> but this isnt complete there will be a lot more added a lot more detail its a big project i had to redo because i had about 15k written down when i was aboout 15 but my dumbass got a virus on that computer and lost all of that good shit and it might be on a backup drive but i cant find the cord to look into it so  
> just started over and kind of hate myself because i cant help but feel i lost a huge chunk of the beginning  
> especially seeing i wrote it in the same era as when i started writing cope which im still super duper proud of fyi thank you very much shameless plug check it out  
> you can ask questions or give suggests and if you actually read the incomplete shit storm wowza im gonna mail you a shitty ass cookie


End file.
